


Damn bitch you live like this?

by champ (natwarae)



Category: Lego Ninjago
Genre: Eating Disorders, Gen, Intrusive Thoughts, Violent Thoughts, Vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-30
Updated: 2020-11-30
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:47:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27801769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/natwarae/pseuds/champ
Summary: Everything burned. His throat burned, his eyes burned, his knuckles, his knees, his head, his chest. he felt a million times worse but god did he feel better. !!PLEASE READ THE WARNINGS IN THE NOTES!!
Comments: 4
Kudos: 22





	Damn bitch you live like this?

**Author's Note:**

> TRIGGER WARNINGS!!  
> this fic contains graphic depictions of eating disorders, vomiting, violent intrusive thoughts, mental health issues, depictions of violence, general self destructive behaviour, slight eye gore(?) referenced suicidal thoughts and referenced child abuse. if i missed anything there plz let me know i’m super tired rn
> 
> this is a vent fic that i wrote at 4am and haven’t even proof read so don’t expect much, i’m literally not even a writer anyway lol but i feel awful and writing this didn’t even help lmao

Everything burned. His throat burned, his eyes burned, his knuckles, his knees, his head, his chest. he felt a million times worse but  god did he feel better, like a huge weight had been lifted from his shoulders, or more accurately, from his stomach.

Cole tried not to look into the porcelain bowl in front of him, no matter how many times he saw his own puke (and that was a lot of times) it never got any less vile. He lifted his left hand up from the tiled floor to flush the contents of his stomach down the drain, he learned a long time ago to not hold the actual toilet, it was hard to explain how he managed to completely shatter the thing last time (damn elemental powers).

It had been Zane’s night to cook, the nindroid could make anything taste good, it only made Cole feel guiltier that he was wasting it like this. It was a shame it didn’t taste as good coming back up as it did going down.

4 times this week and it’s not even Wednesday, fuck I’m pathetic.

With shaking hands he pulled himself up from his position on the floor, using the toilet for support. His knees hurt. He’d been sitting like that for probably 20 minutes, it only really felt like 3.

He sat on the now closed lid trying to catch his breathe, he didn’t remember losing it but it felt so hard to breathe sometimes. It was usually followed by an awful lightheadedness that could easily become a full blown migraine if he wasn’t careful.

His breath was short, his head hurt and his chest burned. Maybe he was dying, he couldn’t really bring himself to care. He felt nothing but apathy to his own health and well-being at this point. He wasn’t even getting any thinner, he just looked more washed out and tired and somehow that made him feel worse than all the physical pain.

But he did care about his health, he cared a lot, not for his own sake but for everyone else. He knew they’d be upset if they found out, especially if they found out just how long it had been going on under their noses. Cole had never been great at sharing his feelings but he  really didn’t want them to know about this. Not the other ninja, anyway.

He feels disgusting just thinking it, but it makes him happy to think about how his dad would react to all this. As much as they tried to repair their relationship, there’s so much shit that neither of them wantedor was equipped to deal with, so it just hangs in the air whenever they catch up and things stay weird and uncomfortable. He feels awful for thinking it, but there would be some sick satisfaction in having Lou realise just how much his perfectionism and impossible standards messed up his son. Hell, maybe he even already knew, he tried to push him into the entertainment industry after all. 

He would never tell him, though. As rough as things are between them he doesn’t want to make his dad cry, he doesn’t want him to think he’s failed as a parent even if he has. because he’s still his dad and Cole still thinks he loves him. Because he has to. 

He loves his friends too, he knows it would hurt them too. That’s why he doesn’t tell them, because he cares about them and not because he’s a pathetic little coward.

Kai would probably yell at him if he found out, call him selfish or pathetic or some other insult he would never actually mean; Cole wouldn’t blame him if he meant them though. He’d yell and cause a fuss and then storm off before they would even be done talking about it, and then come back later all calm and collected talking like a discount Wu. Cole hated when he talked like that, made him feel like some sorry little kid.

Jay would panic; He’d ramble off a checklist of worse-case scenarios that would keep getting more and more unrealistic as he went on. He get angry too, either at himself or at Cole or maybe both, might even cry and throw out a million different nonsensical apologies for all the times he’d made jokes about Cole’s weight and eating habits. 

It’s fine. he’d have to tell him , they were jokes, it’s not like he knew. Normal people who didn’t force themselves to throw up all the time wouldn’t even bat an eyelid to them, and if they made him use just that little bit more force when shoving his fingers down his throat that wasn’t anyone’s fault but his own.

If he was being honest, he didn’t know how Lloyd would react. He’d probably say something smart, too smart for someone whose only been around for 13 years. He’d for sure calm down the other ninja. He was always good at diffusing situations, probably came with the territory of being the ‘chosen one’. Sometimes he worried that the kid was depersonalising himself from situations too much.

Zane and Nya wouldn’t take the news well, but they wouldn’t freak out then and there. Zane would follow him around constantly, making sure he was actually digesting what he ate. He’d probably do that to the point of neglecting his  own health, he wasn’t really good at valuing himself, and hell, they were probably as self destructive as each other in their own ways. Cole couldn’t make him deal with that, though. He had enough emotional trauma, he didn’t need Cole’s own stupid self confidence issues to watch out for as well.

Nya would find overthink the situation to somehow make it her own fault, she’d blame herself even though she would so clearly not be the one at fault. Guilt would make her ignore and avoid him for as long as she could, and she would only make herself feel more guilty because she wasn’t talking to him.

He gets it. Avoiding people when you feel ashamed like that. Sometimes after a really bad binge he’d hate himself so much that he couldn’t even look in the other ninja’s general directions let alone talk to them. He’d work himself to exhaustion with training and chores and hope they shrugged his lack of presence off as him being tired. Jay made a joke once about how he wouldn’t talk to them because his mouth was too stuffed with cake; it made him feel like the biggest piece of shit shit on the planet because he couldn’t just tell him that he wasn’t that far off being right.

That stupid, insignificant comment got to him; it was the worst purge he’d ever done. It was all blood and bile and he locked himself in the bathroom until he had nothing left to cry and nothing left to throw up. That was when he’d first lost a tooth too, and he doesn’t think his throat ever properly stopped hurting after that.

He felt so guilty all the time from hiding this, so guilty that it made him angry. He was so good at keeping his cool but sometimes he just wanted to scream. He wanted to tell Kai that no, actually, he wasn’t afraid of the dentist he was afraid of getting found out, wanted to yell at Jay whenever he made at Cole’s expense, to hit Zane any time that cooked something that he wouldn’t be able to ever enjoy properly because it was so full of carbs or calories or fat that he almost wanted to throw up  before he ate it, to shriek at Nya anytime she looked at him without his shirt he wanted to yell and kick and scream and cut out Jays tongue and gouge out Nya’s eyes and cut off Zane’s hands with one of the kitchen knives and rip out all of Kai’s teeth with pliers and, and- and do  something because he felt like he was drowning agonisingly slow and-.

Suddenly there was a knock at the door. And he wasn’t hurting his friends. He would never in a million years lay a malicious hand on them. He was Cole. He was here, in the bathroom, sitting on the closed lid of the toilet, saying something to the person behind the door. Whatever he said didn’t really register to him even as it left his mouth, something about being out in a minute he thinks, that would make sense.

His legs still hurt from all the sitting and kneeling, but he stands and he goes to the sink anyway. He looks at himself in the mirror and realises that his right eye is extremely red, must’ve burst a blood vessel or something. He brushes his teeth quickly and pretends he doesn’t notice how much it hurts, but his mouth doesn’t taste like sick anymore so it’s fine, it’s  fine  and he’s  fine.

He takes a deep breath and opens the door, he expects Kai being antsy to do his weird before bed hair ritual, or someone who actually has to use the bathroom: What he does not expect is a concerned looking Zane who, being a robot has no need to use be there, and Jay standing worriedly behind him with the first aid kit,

“Jay said that it sounded like someone throwing up in there so we came to see if you were alright,”

On cue Jay presents the first aid kit, as if somehow bandages and gauze are going to help at all with someone throwing up. Cole laughs a bit at that, not much, but it’s endearing enough to lighten his mood slightly. His not too focus too hard on their hands or their mouths,

“Dude we tried knocking like 50 times and you didn’t respond, we were about to bust down the door, thought you collapsed or somthin’,”

“I’m, uh, I’m fine, yeah I was, I was sick in there. Its probably just some kind of bug that’ll be gone by, by uh tomorrow so don’t get too close?” he directs that last part at Jay, Zane can’t exactly get sick, “I’m gonna go try and sleep it off,”

“And you are sure that you’re fine? You seem quite out of it, and you have a subconjunctival hemorrhage,” the way Zane’s looking at him makes it clear he’s doing some sort of scan, he really hopes the marks his incisors left on his knuckles go unnoticed.

“I’m fine, Zane. I mean, I just puked my brains out, but I’ll be totally fine come tomorrow. If I, if I’m not,  then you can worry,” he gives his two friends a shaky smile and a thumbs up and turns to leave. He’s fine. His chest still burns and his face is hot with shame but it’s fine.

**Author's Note:**

> *snap* that’s going in my cringe compilation, you need 2 see a therapist bro :/
> 
> also this fic is NOT endorsing eating disorders, if you or someone you know is suffering with one please try and get help for it! search up some hotlines for your area or talk to a doctor about dealing with it, you’re not alone! you’ll get through this!! get help don’t be a stubborn idiot, the behaviour in this fic isn’t healthy in any way, shape or form


End file.
